In Response to Catholicism & the Ortho-sphere

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today I am back with another special guest.

We're kind of talking about a similar subject as the last episode. If you have not seen the last live stream,

I highly recommend that you go back and watch it. I had the Christian apologist Anthony Rogers on to talk about the conversion of Cameron Bertuzzi of Capturing Christianity, his conversion to Roman Catholicism, and we had a great discussion about the nature of the gospel, comparing the gospel of Rome with what we would take to be the biblical gospel, and so we covered a lot, a lot of information in that live stream, and so I highly recommend that you guys go and check that out.

But today I am really excited to introduce my guest. I have been binging a lot of his episodes, his show on YouTube.

If you don't know who the Other Paul is, go to YouTube, type in Other Paul, and subscribe.

If you are interested in defending biblical Christianity against the claims of Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy, there's excellent, excellent resources.

He's just a wonderful resource to have, and I'm super excited. I know that's kind of controversial. People look at Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as kind of like, you know, it's not that much of a big deal, and this always befuddled me.

I mean, I'm not an expert in these areas, but I've always seen, when I hear the gospel of Rome or the gospel of the

East compared to what Scripture says, there is a disconnect for me. I really try to be as open as I can, but it's very much a disconnect for me, and so I think that these issues are dividing line issues, and they're worth talking about.

If you listen to my last stream, I said something that I continue to stand by, that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox are objects of evangelism.

We should preach the gospel, even to them, just as much as we preach the gospel to any other group that would stray from biblical

Christianity and a biblical conception of the gospel. So I think these are super important issues, and hopefully this conversation will be a blessing to those who are listening in.

All right, well, before I invite my guests, I must remind folks of the

Epic Online Calvinism Conference on January 21st. Okay, that is January 21st.

I will be having Dr. James White, Dr. Guillaume Bignon, Scott Christensen, Saiten Bruggenkeit, and myself.

We will be presenting on various topics relating to Calvinism. This is not going to be your kind of run -of -the -mill conference where we talk about, you know, the five points of Calvinism.

As awesome as those topics are, I think they've been done so much. We're going to be covering different topics that I think you guys are going to find super interesting.

So definitely not your run -of -the -mill Calvinism conference, but if you're into Reformed Theology Calvinism, even if you're not a

Calvinist and you want to come and listen and ask questions, this will be your opportunity.

It is also an awesome opportunity to support Revealed Apologetics. Each ticket that is purchased helps me to do what

I'm doing in the way that I'm doing it, helps with a lot of the back -end stuff as well. So I would greatly appreciate the support in that regard.

All right, well, my goodness, we already have people. Usually it takes time for people to trickle in.

People are here, so this is good. So let's let's get started. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce my very special guest,

The Other Paul. How are you doing, man? What up, Eli? I'm doing fantastic in this lovely early

Australian afternoon with a beautiful blue cloudless sky. It is really nice of you from where I'm at right now. That is awesome.

I always wanted to go to Australia. I don't know if I'll ever get the chance. Perhaps a speaking engagement would take me there, but I hear you.

Well, I was pointing, folks, to your channel, The Other Paul.

Is your main topic Roman Catholicism? I mean, what is the main kind of thrust of what you're trying to do on your channel?

Yeah, well, it may seem like that. And to a large extent, it's understandable because my real main mission is not simply

Protestant apologetics against Rome in the East. In fact, if you look at some of my earliest content, a bunch of it was not that.

And I do intend to go back to more stuff that's not just Rome and the

East because my channel mission overall has just been in any and all areas of scripture, theology and history, particularly ancient history, which

I see a need for good content on and for good educational content on.

And so in the past, I would also include the areas of biblical anthropology and sexuality.

That's actually the other really big topic that I've been very, very largely into for a long time. So especially regarding debates on whether it be women in the church offices, the family structure, marriage, those ones

I've been engaged in quite a bit. And my two, two of my earliest videos that went really, really big, they were on the issue of homosexuality in the

Bible. And they kind of, they kind of exploded it up because I kind of went to town on two people trying to say that that was okay.

And it's liberal stuff. And I just kind of, I just kind of tore it apart. So that kind of took up my channel.

But um, either way, because Roman Catholicism, or as I prefer to call it Romanism, and there's good reasoning for that, it's not pejorative how

I use it. But Romanism and Easternism, the reason why they're such a big focus, at least right now, and will always be even if not the only focus, is because they are among the most important and massive questions of just basic theological truth and foundation for the

Christian faith. And so that's why I spend such a large deal of time on them, because it's not just like one topic with one debate question, but they have within them a billion different major, major questions that need to be answered, even if they're all rested on fundamental questions of authority, which is really, really, really key to being able to define like how, what is a

Christian even. And so that's why I spend so much time on it. And that's why it seems like Protestant apologetics is my main thing, which practically at the moment it is, but not, not necessarily.

And I hope to go back to other stuff. Yeah, when people talk about apologetics, we tend to think of like, you know, defending

Christianity against like atheism, or like Mormonism, and Islam, and Jehovah's Witness, and things like that.

And some people don't look at Roman Catholicism as kind of an object of apologetics.

Like we have to do apologetics with Roman Catholics? Not really. It's kind of, they're kind of the same. Why do you think it's important to see

Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as objects of apologetic engagement? Yeah, absolutely.

Because they make core claims on the Christian faith, including Rome, even if they're a bit more liberal about it these days, some may say.

These though, they're pretty obstinate about where the church, you're not, outside the church, there is no salvation, all else being equal, you and I, Eli, we're on the hell path.

And I respect it when Orthodox are very like blunt and upfront about that. Including my buddy, Craig Trulia, shout out to him, absolute legend.

But nonetheless, they make claims on the essential nature and structure of the

Christian faith amidst a whole host of questions of dogma and doctrine, among other things, things which fundamentally affect the

Christian life. And so that's, and so these, many of these things are things which we, whether, whether you're someone's a

Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Lutheran, whatever, of the broad brush of Protestant, which is not a term, which is a term

I'm trying to lean away from now for reasons we may explain tonight. But nonetheless, they make claims which fundamentally go against what we believe is the truth and the core of the

Christian faith, including issues, not just of like soteriology, for example, but even issues of Christian liberty.

And so that's why it is really necessary for us to have a great apologetic effort and polemical effort towards Rome and the

East, because what they are saying, from our perspective, is fundamentally in error and goes against even the gospel itself.

So that's why, that's why there should be a really, really, and has been for a long time, really massive focus on apologetics towards them.

I find that people who are not very much concerned with doctrine don't see any issue with the difference between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

It's kind of when you take like the helicopter view over Roman Catholicism and Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy, from a helicopter perspective, they kind of, they kind of look somewhat the same.

They're different, but it's kind of like, it's kind of like flying in a heli, like, I don't know, like a thousand meters in the air or something, and looking down on two guys, it's like, oh, it's just two guys that look exactly the same, but then you zoom down and one of them is wearing a full three -piece suit and the other one's in a clown suit.

There's a difference when you actually go into detail. Yes, and I think once, and that's really what gets me when

I hear other Christian apologists say, like, what's the big deal? It's not a big deal, Roman Catholicism. And I really try, and some people that I really like and I really respect,

I'm kind of like, okay, I'm tracking with you, I'm trying to see, you know, I'm trying to see it from your perspective, but then when you kind of, you know, you take the rope, you jump out of the helicopter, you kind of strike down to see the details, and yes, it doesn't look the same at all to me, and you're right, as you said before, they strike at the very core issues of what it means, you know, what the gospel is.

Now you said something about Protestantism, so I suppose let's jump right into the fray here. One of the criticisms of Roman Catholicism, that Roman Catholicism has towards the

Protestant Christianity, is this issue of definition. I mean, what does it even mean to be Protestants, because there's so much division and denominations.

How do you respond to that claim that is made by both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics, that Protestants are the

Johnny -come -latelys and look how divided they are, they're kind of this, you know, you can't really define it because it's too diverse, and everyone's arguing over which definition is correct.

How would you equip someone to engage in those sorts of objections against Protestant Christianity?

Yeah, absolutely. So as with everything, and one of the key principles that has really helped me to get to the level of these discussions that I have, is to always ask when you hear a question or a criticism, don't just engage in a face value, because when you do that, you may unwittingly accept presuppositions of that question which are not actually granted, and so this is a perfect question really to engage that with, because the criticism itself actually provides the very answer that diffuses it, and I'll explain that in just a second, but when you get thrown these objections from Romanists and Easterners and all that jazz, especially brand new ones, like once you've encountered them before, the answers that you've given before just come back to you like that, especially after a long while, but otherwise when you're first encountering them, you want to stop, take a look at them and say, what are the assumptions underlying this question?

Are they all valuable? Are they all valid? Do I need to actually engage the question as it is, or can

I actually undermine it entirely? And so in this case, the very assumption that undermines this question, which thus allows me to not give excuses for why

Protestants are divided, I don't have to do that, I could just undermine the very question and say, um, that's actually a good point that you guys point out, that Protestantism is so ill -defined and divided and all that, because no one has ever claimed to have a single

Protestant ecclesial body. That's the thing. Protestantism is not a claim at a single tradition or a single ecclesial communion.

It is a historic umbrella category that put together numerous consciously distinct and independent communions and traditions and united them according to fundamental uniting claims.

Chiefly, for example, the five solei, especially sola scriptura and sola fide, the two ones that are most, uh, most in contention from Rome and the

East. And so already the question itself is bunk. It's like saying, it's like saying, for example, um,

Oh, it's as if a pagan, in fact, historic pagans gave this exact argument. Um, like, uh,

Kelsey's for example, from the, around the second century, I believe one of the earliest critics, if not the earliest known critic of Christianity from the

Roman world, he himself said that, Oh, what's with these Christians are all divided against each other. Where's the truth in this, in this, in this, in this system.

So the exact criticism that, uh, pagans that, sorry, that well, Catholics, pagans, no, uh, that the

Catholics and the Romanists and they eat them as they give to us Protestants, but it was leveled against Christianity in general.

And so we can just do the exact same. Well, by that same logic, that argument is fatal to Protestantism. Then let's just do it against Christianity as a whole.

So let's talk to a Roman Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox. Well, how could you guys, how could, how could your religion be true?

If there's so many Christians who disagree with each other and then they'll give the, uh, from their perspective, correct answer.

And logically we could, we could accept it as a valid answer. We're not claiming to be united with, like from a

Roman Catholic, for example, we're not claiming to be united with all these Pentecostals and Baptists and even the

Orthodox to a large extent. Uh, we may believe that potentially there could be some graces that extend to them, but fundamentally we are the true church.

We represent ourselves. We are not pretending to be united with them. To which Protestants of various communions can say the exact same thing.

I, an Anglican, am not responsible for what happens over in the Lutheran communion or with the Presbyterians or the

Baptists or the Pentecostals or what have you. I'm not responsible for that. We're our own thing because we are a distinct ecclesial body.

So if it's unfair to attack Christianity as a whole, because, uh, as, as an argument against Rome, for example, um, then likewise, unfair to attack

Protestantism as a whole, because there's not a claim to unity to begin with. You actually have to address them by their claims.

That's the key thing you, you need to for, for you to point out internal inconsistency with our view, you actually have to take our claims at face value.

That's a, that's a very basic thing of logical argumentation. And so since we are not claiming to have a perfect ecclesial unity, whether by structure or administration, or even by points of doctrine with Lutherans and Anglicans and all that, that's not an internal problem with us.

Now they may claim an external problem that even if you don't claim that there's an issue, nonetheless, same thing applies.

We're not pretending to be a single union to begin with. We have a distinct theology of the nature of the church.

And so that has to be dealt with, not just throwing over, throwing up crap like, Oh, you're divided, blah, blah, blah. Right. Right.

So, so, okay. So, so two things, what you just expressed there, I think the listeners to my channel would be very familiar with, uh, because we talk a lot about presuppositional apologetic methodology, uh, in which we place a great emphasis upon the importance of internal worldview critique.

So that some questions that, or objections that are posited again, uh, from the Roman Catholic or the

Eastern Orthodox to the Protestant is often based upon presuppositions, which we reject.

So are you simply saying, well, the question is, is a bad question. We could bite the bullet and say we are divided, but the

Protestant claim has never been to perfect unity on the sorts of things we all differ.

Rather, it's a claim that we are unified with respect to fundamental, essential core doctrines of which every true church is in agreement with, with respect to those essentials.

I mean, have I got you correct? Well, more or less. Yeah. And I, and I know that there's a, they try to attack the issue of, of like what is essential doctrine, which

I think there's some fairness to that attack. So we can get into that soon, I reckon. Um, but otherwise, yes, there, when they very confidently try to posit these problems with, uh, the, the

Protestant, with the various Protestant traditions, they do it on the basis of their own standard of what is acceptable unity and what is, um, acceptable and unacceptable levels of disunity.

So they have their own standards for that. Um, for example, within Rome, let's say they're there within their system.

It is technically acceptable that a large swathe of laymen are, um, heretical in their beliefs or even outright apostate, even if they're within the visible bounds of the church.

But even if it's not, that's not a good thing, it's not fatal to their claim because they're not claiming to have perpetually enforced, perfect doctrinal knowledge across all, or even a majority of their laymen.

The core claim is simply that the true faith has been and is perpetually and perfectly preserved by the apostolic succession, chiefly of the

Roman sea of the sea of Peter of the Bishop of Rome, what, what have you, um, as well as the quote unquote consensus teaching of the bishops around the world.

So that's their specific claim. And so for that claim, for internal consistency, you can't simply just say,

Oh, you're layman divided, blah, blah, blah. But that's an important thing because that's their standards. And so by their own standards, that kind of division is okay.

But then what they do is they take their standards of, uh, of, uh, of like an apostolic succession, for example, and having an enforced, at least an enforced official unity of doctrine by their

Pope and their College of Cardinals. They see that Protestants like that. And then they say, Oh, look, you guys are deficient.

You guys are clearly wrong because you don't accept our standards of unity and enforcing doctrinal, uh, sameness, which is just a pure act of question begging of what is the natural or what is an appropriate level of unity.

I can perfectly say as a Protestant. Um, okay. So, uh, these many Protestants who

I believe are brothers in Christ, so various, uh, Baptists, um, Pentecostals and whatnot, those who disagree with reform theology, let's say for example, uh, they do, they disagree with total depravity.

Okay. They disagree with that doctrine and a Romanist and, uh, and an Eastern may, may, may say not necessarily, cause

I think there's high level apologists who don't make these arguments, but they may say, Oh, that's bad. You guys are divided on that question, blah, blah.

And I'll just say, yeah, we are. Um, and so what, so what,

I mean, especially on this question for the Romanists, uh, on issues of, um, predestination, for example, don't tell them that their own papacy is actually told there was a dispute between the

Molinists and the Franciscans on this very question. Um, back in the, I think the late middle ages or middle.

So, um, and the papacy, when the papacy came in to actually address the issue, they didn't give a definitive answer.

They just said, you guys can't call each other, each other heretics. So there's kind of an enforced, uh, allowance of disunity on that issue.

But either way, nonetheless, um, just because we're divided on that question. Okay. So what we Protestants in our system, having a correct knowledge of the nature of the depravity of man is not per se going to damn you or ruin your

Christian life. That's in our system. That's not the case. So, so what it may, if you guys think that that's the case for your system.

Okay. But that's your business. That's not ours. Why should we Why do we need to have a perfect unity on this issue?

Unless we are to presume your system, which is the very thing in question. So that's a key thing that Protestants need.

If they're going to engage in these issues, you need to drill your head in there. Do not allow the Romanist or the

Easterner to define the standards of the debate because conscious, whether consciously or unconsciously, they do this all the time.

They come into these things. Uh, many of them come into these discussions, presuming that their system is the standard and you have to reach their standard.

Whereas we need to be much more often. And for a while now, and even more frequently today, more process is doing this.

We just need to rock up and say, Oh no, I don't accept your standard. No, I don't accept your standard. That's not a given previous standard.

Um, so that's, that's my ultimate. So I hear, I've heard a debate once where you had a Protestant Christian, uh, debating an

Eastern Orthodox. And as soon as the Protestant mentioned scripture, he goes, well,

I don't accept your interpretation of scripture because you don't have any ground to know what scripture is.

Demonstrate to me that you could know what scripture is independent of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Right? Then we can talk about interpreting scripture. So every time the Protestant quoted scripture, uh, the

Eastern Orthodox person's like, do you have no authority to interpret that? You have no, how can a Protestant navigate that kind of conversation?

Yep. I'll ask him, I'll ask him. Okay. So what did the early church father, let's go to the church fathers, let's say before the third century or fourth century before the fourth century, even before the fifth century.

Um, by what authority did the early church fathers there assume the, what was the canon of scripture and what, what was just in general, what was scripture and why they cited certain documents of scripture and not others?

Why? What authority do they have? Well, the Orthodox or the Romanists may say, uh, well they had the, the, the, they had the consensus teachings of the church and it's like, okay, what, what consensus teachings where, what evidence are you talking about?

What, what are you talking about? And then they may point to historical evidence regarding the canon and all that such to which we say, okay, um,

I, as a Protestant can do exactly the same thing. In fact, that's what us Protestants do all the darn time with this issue of the canon.

We appeal to the historical evidence, i .e. the historical witness of the early church. We do that all the time.

We can do that without any council, without any Pope, then we can, otherwise you're condemning your own saints.

So I'm going to stop right there. So another criticism that I, that I hear when Protestants appeal to historical evidence, they'll say, look, you're trying to appeal to non infallible sources to demonstrate that you, uh, that the

Bible is your infallible source. So you have a, you have a non infallible authority being evidenced for your infallible

Bible. So how does, how does that work? Because we don't, and Protestants hold the traditions and those historical data points, which

I would agree are important. We don't hold them to be, you know, infallible in any meaningful way. Yep.

That's right. Um, one thing I'll do, I'll give my full answer here, but I highly recommend people, uh, go over to my friend or Orthodox friend,

Craig Trulia, Orthodox Christian theology on YouTube. I forgot the exact name in the video. Um, but if you just look up him and with my name, you should find it cause we've had a few collabs together, but we had one on this exact issue where we're both just hate that argument of,

Oh, well you can't know your infallible Bible through fallible means. And we're just both like, that's cringe.

That is literally everybody is in that boat. And one way I demonstrated that low with a slightly different example, but more or less the same form

I could say, for example, okay, okay. So you're an Orthodox. Um, you believe that the church has infallibly established, uh, the practice of icon and Julia that this is official church teaching, correct?

This is infallible. It's infallibly certain. And the Orthodox will say, yes, it is. Um, to which I say, okay, great.

How do you know that this is, has been infallibly decreed? And they'll likely point to, well, of course the seventh great ecumenical council, which represented the, uh, the supreme and consensus teaching of the whole church on the issue that has given us, given us infallible certainty on the issue to which

I say, okay, great, great, fantastic. Um, how do you know the seventh council said those things to which they may pause for a little bit and they'll say, but then after which they will probably say, um, well you read the canons and decrees and the acts of the seventh council, of course, to which

I say, oh, okay, okay. Okay. Um, and where do you read those? Where specifically, where do you go to, to read those acts and decrees and canons and so on and so forth.

And they may point to, for example, probably probably the only real good one you can point to today. That's actually complete.

Um, would be, and I've got it on my shelf over there. Let me, give me one second. So this right here, as far as I'm aware, the only, uh, one of, if not the only complete

English editions of the full acts of the second council of Nicaea where I kind of do Leah was, uh, established as a universal church practice.

So they may point to this and they say, Hey, look, this edition of the acts translated. Um, we have it right here.

We can learn that I kind of do Leah was established by the council. We have infallible certainty to which I would say, okay, great.

Now looking at this and pretty much any critical edition of an ancient text, uh, it is based on a critical edition of, uh, of, of the original language texts of the acts.

So, um, specifically, this is based on the addition of, uh, ecumenical councils, uh, called the,

I believe it's called the conciliatory ecumenical room, which is Latin for the ecumenical councils or of the ecumenical councils after conciliatory ecumenical room.

So acts of the ecumenical councils. And those are based on manuscript traditions and they make decisions on variants and how to ultimately come up with the best and most original text.

Right now, here's the thing. This is what we need to do now. Okay. So Mr. Eastern Orthodox guy, who's hypothetically appealing to this text, um, is the translator infallible?

No, he's not. In fact, an Orthodox will definitely not want to say that because the translator is father Richard price of the

Roman Catholic church. Now, next step are the assemblers of the critical edition infallible.

No, they're not. As with likewise with the translator, the translator could make it's, he has the theoretical potential to make an incorrect translation decision of varying degrees.

Likewise with the, those who put together the critical edition, they could have wrongly weighed up the manuscript evidence of the, uh, of the manuscripts themselves in putting it into their critical edition.

So two layers of fallibility right there alone. Now let's go back even further.

How about the original scribes of the manuscript tradition, copying copies of copies? Were they infallible?

Clearly not. The fact that critical additions even exist prove that. Now, how about even those who originally penned the acts themselves, those who were hearing the other authoritative bishops speak what they were saying, and then put that down, pen to paper, whether live or after the fact, were they infallible?

No, they weren't. So at least four layers of fallible means an

Orthodox person will have to go to, uh, in order to discern that their church has infallibly decreed on a certain issue.

So in other words, everybody is reliant upon fallible means and fallible historical evidence in order to establish even that their own church has made an infallible proclamation on a certain issue.

And this is, and that's only a problem if you assume fallibility means uncertainty, which many of these apologists do.

And to which I say that's absolute hogwash. A, uh, for example, a phone book, analogy

I love to hear a phone book is fallible. And yet for any phone book to be properly functioning, almost all phone books

I've ever seen, or as far as I'm aware, are totally without error. Not because they are guaranteed by the

Holy spirit to only have correct phone numbers at a time, but because of how carefully made they are, they are technically fallible.

Technically a error could creep into a phone book and yet they are stupidly reliable. We know that for a fact, likewise with many other sources.

So point being, uh, no, everybody relies upon fallible means and fallible layers of historical evidence in, in order to make their claims on anything that's alleged to be infallible.

And in most other scenarios, we're all okay with this. We take this for granted. So why then do these lay apologists try to act as if suddenly it's a problem?

Now, now the Protestant does it. And frankly, I think that's just because in many cases that they're very desperate, uh, in trying to get a one up on the

Protestant where many positive arguments for their system don't work. And so they try to introduce some major level of like Epicurean skepticism or something in order to undermine their worldview, but in a way that backfires on their own.

And so that's how I'll respond to that argument. Everyone relies on Bible means, would you also say that there's an issue with, um, if you were to say that there is a, an infallible declaration of some truth.

Now you, as an, as a fallible interpreter has to interpret that infallible truth.

So that's another layer. You're the very fact that you are, you yourself are not infallible. That's right.

That's right. That's the infallible gate. Unless you grant that language is a sufficient mechanism to convey truth such that even with our fallibility language is a sufficient tool for fallible men to learn infallible truth.

Unless you grant that, then you're stuck in that layer of we cannot go beyond our own horizons, so to speak.

And so we're just kind of believing on dogmatic assertion that something is true and that we've interpreted it correctly.

Yep, exactly. Exactly. Everybody has to grant fallible means to everything that argument, that argument doesn't destroy

Protestantism. It destroys human civilization because civilization is built upon human communication, which is by nature fallible.

Right. Yeah. I'm speaking with the other Paul, otherwise known as Paul Facey.

I've never heard your real name until you messaged me. I was like, wait a minute. I thought your real name was the other

Paul. No, I'm just kidding. I'm speaking with the other Paul. If anyone has questions, please put them in the comment section and preface your question with question.

And towards the back end of this episode, we will get to your questions. Hopefully, I didn't tell

Paul that we were doing that, but I assume he's okay with it. No, I'm cool. I love Q &A. All right.

So if you have any questions or any pushback on anything that Paul is saying, the comments is the place to express that.

Now, another criticism that I hear, and we touched on it very briefly, is that Protestantism is the

Johnny come lately. So doctrines like sola scriptura or sola fide, all these kinds of the pillars of Protestant theology, was never believed throughout church history.

And so the weak, what do you call it? The kink in the armor or the chink in the armor.

Kink? What is it? Kink, chink? I think it's normally chink in the armor. Although I don't know if that's a very accepted word these days.

I had to be careful. I'm like, chink in the armor? That doesn't sound right. This is the duty of going live.

I can't edit this out. So I'm sorry. I love Asian people, please. Me too.

I'm actually surrounded by them where they are. So I have to love them. That's awesome. That's awesome. Oh my goodness, let me stop.

So the claim is that Protestant theology comes later. There's no evidence of the believing in sola scriptura, sola fide.

So how would you respond to this idea that Protestantism lacks a historical pedigree that can be taught throughout history to the teaching of the apostles?

I'd say two things. One, again, back to the presuppositions issue, it relies on certain Romanists and Eastern presuppositions on what level of quote continuity there has to be with the early church and whether a large massive swathe of the church can for a long time, even on very important issues.

I think those are big presuppositions on which Romanists, when they come to these discussions, very often beg the question on.

And some of them, they don't beg the question on it. They'll recognize it's something to be argued for. And they will argue for it from certain passages like the gates of hell will never prevail and all that stuff.

But otherwise, I think at least, at least with how I articulate it more, more

Anglo Catholic, I guess, cause I'm an Anglican myself, but I guess more Anglo Catholic Anglicans may somewhat disagree with what

I say, maybe. But otherwise I think it is, I think it's a, it's a, it's a very common

Protestant assumption that it is not theoretically impossible for large swathes of the self -proclaimed visible church of Christ.

That's the key thing, self -proclaimed visible church of Christ to err even for a very long time on very key, on very key issues.

Doesn't that happen with the Trinity though, with the whole Arian controversy? Well, yeah, that's the thing. And that's, that's the thing.

And that's actually one I'll point to quite often. Now they'll, they'll try to, some, some apologists, I think, even the good ones, and I think, sorry guys, but I think it's a very big, special pleading thing.

They'll try to say, Oh, but, but, but, but that was only for, that was only for a few decades, but, but, but, and there was a council that definitively settled it and all that.

To which I'd simply say, look, few decades, few century, whatever fact is many people lived and died under that massive period of Arian dominance.

A lot of people in local areas, even if perhaps they weren't even fully convinced Arians themselves, just lived and died under this thing.

And so I'd argue that for the Romanist and Eastern standard of the church, the visible church, not erring in such a massive degree,

I think to be consistent, it can't even last for a few decades, in my opinion. Now, of course they may dispute with me on that.

And I'll simply say that it's special pleading, but whatever, if one of them wants to argue that with me, then that'll come at a certain time.

So that's the first issue, the fact of a presupposition that the early church, that the church cannot in a large degree err on an issue and thus require reformation.

I think that's in, that is an erroneous assumption at that. Cause I don't think Christ ever does make a guarantee that a, that this defined of this defined visible church with these specific sets of diocese that, um, a massive chunk of them, or even all of them can't, uh, for X amount of time, uh, on a certain issue.

I don't think that guarantee is ever given by Christ. Only that believers will always exist. Um, he never guarantees that there'll be of a certain number or a certain, uh, proportion of people who proclaim to be

Christians. And in fact, there's numerous texts that, uh, towards the, towards the ends of days that there'll be a massive apostasy.

Um, and so I arguably one could, one could say that Roman and Eastern ecclesiology, where they claim that the church can't err to such a great degree, uh, would make a great apostasy impossible, but maybe, maybe that's a, that's a different topic to go into.

Uh, it might just me being a little bit simplistic and a little bit cheeky, but nonetheless, that first thing, big presupposition, uh, that needs to be acknowledged.

Second thing though, is what I'd say is that at least in certain issues, that's slightly false. I believe we have, for example, in one of the first alleged

Popes. So Clement of Rome from within the, uh, I'd say around late mid first century.

Uh, cause I believe the letter was actually written around or before the seventies AD, which is an early dating for the letter.

So right in the middle, are you an early, are you an early date for the completion of the new Testament, 70 AD? Um, I'm, I'm, I'm, that's kind of a,

I've dabbled in that a little bit, but I've kind of lost interest. Um, because like, yeah, yeah, it's,

I am generally early date. Um, and it was actually a very good book that argues for like a recent one by a scholar that argues for really, really early dates called rethinking the dates of the new

Testament by Jonathan Bernier. Um, and that one, that one argues like the flipping forties for Mark and then the late fifties for Matthew and Luke.

Um, so it's pretty, pretty, pretty heavy book on what it does. Um, but nonetheless, first Clement, the letter first comment from, uh, the church in Rome in the first century,

I argue quite a bit that it actually teaches explicitly the principle of justification by faith alone.

Um, and it's in one of the chapters in there. I don't have it on me right now, but there's, you can easily find it online. You can find it on my channel.

Even I've done a, I did a whole video on this with my Lutheran, my Danish Lutheran friend,

YouTube truth under godliness. We did a whole collab on this. So if you want to get a big, deep dive onto that, you can go there.

Um, but yeah, among other fathers who would teach various things on, excuse me, justification by faith alone.

Um, even principles that necessitate soul scriptura. So you can look at, for example, uh, a big passage that received a lot of attention since Dr.

Gavin Holland did his video on it. Truth Unites, um, Augustine's on baptism against the Donatus, I believe in book two, where he quite explicitly says that scripture alone does not, uh, and he goes through the whole thing.

It says individual writings can, uh, individual bishops can, uh, local councils can, uh, and even almost near quote, if I can remember it very well, plenary councils made for the whole

Christian world. So functionally an ecumenical council, even these can be corrected by later councils.

Uh, and so for Augustine, at least in that section, when he's talking there, he genuinely believes in soul scriptura.

Um, beyond that, I can't comment a whole ton on specifics because, and this is one other thing that Protestants that Christian apologists,

Protestant apologists, Protestant thinkers, whatever you have to be honest about. If there's an area which you haven't studied with a massive amount of depth, don't go making claims in it.

Yes. Go and study something comprehensively before you start to argue about it. And so in that regard, I personally actually have not invested a whole big deal of time on discerning the fathers for proof texts on faith alone and, uh, and soul scriptura.

So I'm sorry. Are you familiar, Paul, with David King's work on the, uh, the defense of soul scriptura, like a multi -volume work one second in date.

I am missing one. I've missed one missing one out day. You may look at that.

Would you think this is a good place for someone to start to dig deep? Do you think this is an excellent resource or are there other places people should go?

Um, I think that is an excellent resource. I'll explain that in just one second, but on the specifics of soul feed a and soul scriptura on the files,

I can't give more specifics than what I have given, but a good principle, which I can nonetheless give is that this is again, another example of lay

Romanists and, um, and Easterners where they'll make grandiose claims like,

Oh, your teaching was totally absent from the early church. Don't take that for granted. Don't let them take the high ground and just assume their position as a default.

And it's your burden alone to refute them. Tell them to prove it. Tell them to prove that their, that their teaching was utterly unanimous and that any alleged texts, which may prove, um, faith alone or soul scriptura should not be interpreted that way.

Um, everybody in these questions, everybody has the burden of proof. They have the burden of proof to prove their position.

We have the burden of proof to prove ours. Um, and so, um, even alongside that though, don't be tempted.

Um, as annoying as it may be when they're shouting in your ear on this issue, as I said before, don't dive into it until you've done a mad amount of research yourself and you've got really good, certain conclusions on it.

Yeah. Patience, but I think this is a weak point for a lot of Protestants. It's definitely a weak point of mine.

I mean, I'm supposed to be a professional. I was, I've been called a professional apologist by some people and I'm woefully ignorant of the kind of church history that's required to defend historical

Protestantism against a well -informed Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. So this is definitely an area that I could firm up on, but, um, it knowing history and treating history with respect, um,

I think is a very important part of, uh, of doing these sorts of things. So yeah, there's nothing wrong with saying,

I don't know if someone brings up a good point, you know, there's no shame in saying, Hey, that's a great point. Let me look into that.

Um, we need to be careful of doing kind of drive by apologetics. We have these power encounters and we act like we have all the answers and then, and then that's it.

You need to be, uh, you know, humble and put the work in. And I really appreciate what you did on your channel.

You did a video that you took down because you felt that you did not put enough work into it to properly address that.

And I thought that was very, um, I don't know if I ended up, I don't think I just, then I see a two one. It might be,

I don't know. Maybe, maybe you kept it. I don't think I took it down. Cause I actually, I actually, it's actually a personal principle where I leave my mistakes up unless it's something that I have to take down for whatever reason.

I leave it up there. So it's just like nothing to hide, nothing on my sleeve and all that. Um, but then also be honest.

But yeah, yeah. As you mentioned, I did acknowledge that. Oh, I made a big error with research. So yeah, that's what I try to do as well.

So, okay. So if we were to envision Roman Catholicism as this great monster, okay.

This big beast, there's so many different areas and points of attack, right?

What is Rome's greatest strength? And what is Rome's greatest weakness?

So if you can take a few moments to steel man, the Roman Catholic position, and then when you're done steel, manning it,

I don't want you to mix the critique with the steel, man. I want, here's the steel, man.

Now what is the greatest? I'm going to, I'm going to say it right. Chink in the armor. Okay.

In the armor. And where are some other weak spots that the

Protestant can take their apologetic sword and poke? So we don't always have to go for the jugular, but I want to know what the jugular point is, as well as some of minor, but important areas where we can kind of, uh, slip the blade, so to speak, and give some valid critique.

So, so go ahead. So Roman Catholicism is the, is true right now for a few moments.

Yeah. Well, okay. I guess so. Well, the greatest strength of Roman Catholicism, um, Romanism, however, uh, that they have above all other

Christian claims and Christian traditions is the fact of the office of the papacy of the Bishop of Rome, uh, who is the single supreme principle of unity of temporal unity for all

Christians and the entire church around the globe. It is very obvious, plain, and identifiable, uh, the central source of unity for the church, unlike the

Orthodox and the Protestants, where it really is decentralized. Some of them may even be very proud of that fact.

And yet nonetheless, when there's issues of split schism, doctrinal corruption, and all that jazz, um, even then, even if one can come up with good arguments for their position, it still muddies the waters on where are the exact boundaries of the church?

What is the principle and the source of unity for the Christian church? Um, to which then, to which one

Protestant or one Orthodox may say, well, where our reading of, uh, of this passage of scripture or of the sacred tradition of the church, our reading is correct.

And we can demonstrate it to which we can say, okay, that's, that's great. You're still relying fundamentally on human faculties, human functions, not to say that it's necessarily unreliable, but it's still fundamentally a human centered and a rationality centered point of unity.

Whereas with the Bishop of Rome, you have a single objective figure who was granted the, uh, the, uh, the office of the vicar of Christ by Christ himself, first to St.

Peter, and then he, along to other bishops of Rome into the future. And because this is rooted on something which just doesn't need to be interpreted, it's rooted just on the mere observable fact of the existence of this single office lay, uh, lay it onto a single person.

You are able to identify the point of unity with the church. And so all you need to do then is say,

Hey, is this guy under submission? Is this guy, is this church, is this diocese, whatever, are they under submission to the

Bishop of Rome and following, uh, what he proclaims as the true teaching of the church? If so, you have a very clear and objective basis to say that this is, this guy is within the true church.

And likewise, anyone who's not doing that, you have a very clear, objective basis to say that they are not within the church.

You don't have to rely on making layers of argumentation or making books and articles in order to rationally demonstrate however true they may be in order to rationally demonstrate why this guy's in the church, why this guy's not in the church or why this guy's correct, why this guy's not correct.

You have a very single, just as we have with the Bible itself, where we need to only say, this is the word of God, word of God says it cases closed.

Um, likewise, you can say with a single temporal principle, one that's perpetual, unlike the apostles and unlike with Christ who were only on earth for such a long period of time, the papacy is perpetual and you can point to that single principle where you can simply say the

Pope is here. The Pope says it, that's it. Uh, that is the point of unity for the church.

This is the real existence of the church. And then for the, if you want an evidential basis for that too easy, you go to simple passages such as Matthew chapter 16, where Christ himself is granting the keys of the kingdom to Peter himself so that whatsoever he binds on earth shall be bound in heaven.

Whatsoever he shall loose on earth shall be loose in heaven. And there's a multivariate layer. Uh, there's multi, uh, there's a multivalent polyvalent, uh, meaning to this passage and to, um, to this power of binding and loosing it, it can refer to the admittance of people into and out of the church.

And so the jurisdictional authority of the papacy and of the church, but also of the fact of teachings, binding and loosing teachings, whether it means binding certain true teachings of the faith on the faithful or definitively rejecting certain teachings as heretical that was given to Peter.

So he is clearly established as a principle source of unity. And you have this recognized all the way from the beginning of church.

You have the letter of first Clement where the Roman church is intervening in the affairs of Corinth in the, in the somewhat towards the

East over there, not too far, but still well outside of the alleged local jurisdiction of Rome, they're intervening in that situation.

So already in the first century, you have the church of Rome exercising that very power of Peter as the principle of unity within the church, where it's solving disputes and definitively saying use schismatics in Corinth, repent.

And then likewise, you have Irenaeus saying the same thing with respect to Rome, that it is necessary for Christians to submit, uh, to obey the teachings of Rome because of its perfect preservation of the epistolic teaching from Peter and from Paul.

Um, and so that is my brief, brief steel man of the Roman Catholic position. How do you think my favorite comment here?

Uh, uh, this person says the biggest weakness now of Rome, everything

I said about Rome's greatest stress is false. Come on. That's the greatest weakness.

Well, everything I just said was completely false. I could have said all that.

And it would have been so funny. It's a no blog. I had to ruin it. Oh my word. Okay. Okay. That made me laugh.

Uh, I thought you were going to say the strongest, the strongest argument in favor of Roman Catholicism is basically the

Bayesian analysis. Uh, I want to talk about that by the way. I want to talk about that.

I would like to talk about that now. So that's your, that's your steel, man. Okay. So now what is, uh, what's wrong with that?

What is wrong with Rome's strongest? Are you saying that the strongest point that Rome has is the claims to the papacy?

Yes, that's right. That's on paper. Yeah, because that is, yes, because that is their definitive, that is their, um, that is their distinctive claim.

And also which they claim is like the foundation of everything. Um, and we can, which we can also observe in a generic sense that if it were true, it'd be a pretty darn strong, cool thing.

Um, but to get onto the, uh, to the chink in the armor, the weakness is, as was said earlier, it is all false.

Um, but also I'd simply say that the, to be more specific, the biggest, just as the biggest strength in the armor for Rome is the papacy, the biggest weakness in the armor for Rome is the papacy as well.

Precisely because quite literally everything rides on the, uh, on the integrity of the office of one man.

And so there's, there's, there's very high, grandiose claims historically for the integrity of the

Roman office that the, the sea of Rome will never defect, uh, from the faith that can't teach heresy. Um, and so because of so many grand claims about, uh, the integrity of Rome and how

Rome being integrous is what is the way by which the church as a whole remains integral. So no matter how many other diocese may go to crap, uh, as long as Rome is perfect, it's all good.

It's, it's, it's all going to be fine, at least, uh, at least in the ultimate sense. Um, but that's kind of the problem because if you can just demonstrate one situation where Rome failed, uh, the

Bishop of Rome failed in his office to teach the truth, um, the whole edifice kind of goes falling down and there's multiple situations in history, whether it be, uh, the

Bishop of Rome teaching what Rome herself recognizes as heresy today, or just being inconsistent in their teaching.

There's numerous, numerous historical scenarios, like borderline, an entire buffet of these things, which can point to, to say that,

Hey, Rome is inconsistent. Um, it doesn't work. Therefore the papacy as articulated by the first Vatican council is false.

So you can point to major situations such as, for example, I believe the fifth archimedical councils. I'm not good with my numbers.

Sometime, basically, um, when what's his face when, when Pope quote unquote honorius was condemned for heresy, for teaching the heresy of monothelitism.

Um, and the modern Roman apologists response today will typically be, well, he was condemned in his person, but he wasn't condemned in his office as universal shepherd shepherd.

This is, this is something you will hear, for example, from Michael Lofton on reason and theology. Um, and so according to that, even if, if it's not a good thing, it doesn't, um, substantially affect the claims of Roman indefectibility of the

Bishop of Rome. Um, I think Orthodox, okay. Orthodox apologetics says Vigilius was the fifth council.

I'm trying to remember which one, because I've listened to this situation so many times, I can't believe I don't remember the precise number of the counts, but either way, either way, when

Norris was condemned for that heresy, um, they'll try to give that distinction, um, that he was only condemned in his person in order to maintain the claim that the

Bishop of Rome in his office, uh, is totally indefectible. It doesn't, does not teach error.

The problem is though, the council itself doesn't make that distinction. And in fact, when it condemns him, it also condemns at least two other, as far as I'm, uh, as I remember from reading the decrees, uh, it condemns two other bishops, uh, for teaching the heresy as well.

And it, and it, uh, it articulates, um, the error and what Honoris did in such a way as to very strongly entail that no, he was officially, he was teaching this on an official level through his office.

He wasn't just personally spouting out loud, his private thoughts. He was actually using his office to do this stuff.

Um, and so of course, uh, that that's one issue where many Roman apologists have, uh, have really, really, really tried to argue, go really hard on this issue, because if it's true, if Honoris was condemned as Pope, then that's their entire system gone, destroyed, utterly leveled.

Um, likewise, you have the issue with Pope Vigilius, which in fairness, I'm not as well, uh, versed on as that. So I won't mention that entirely.

Um, but from the little I have seen, that is another very clear issue of, uh, of papal condemnation and heresy, but also what it does show, um, is that fundamentally, again, also contra what

Rome claims today, especially the first Vatican council, that these ecumenical councils presumed themselves to actually be above the

Pope above the Bishop of Rome. They could lawfully anathematize a Pope, for example. Um, now of course, again, papal apologists, they have alleged attempted responses to that as well.

Ultimately though, what very often comes down to, and you'll notice a pattern for it from their, from their apologists is making endless layers of distinctions, which simply did not exist back then.

And so that's another key thing that Protestants you have to look out for. Don't just let them get away with their distinctions. You can be charitable and grant that maybe some distinctions are possible, maybe some are fair, but don't just give them a carte blanche on distinctions to make.

Um, so issues like that, issues such as the salvation of those outside of the canonical bounds of the church, second

Vatican, second Vatican council, for example, has some very flowery claims, uh, about, uh, alleged, uh, alleged

Christians, uh, outside of the church of Rome, um, and how the Holy Spirit works with them and they're united to Christ by their baptism and other, other major things, as well as later comments, whether by Popes or by other officials, which functionally treat other non -Catholics as Christians.

Um, but then by contrast, you go back to the, uh, you go back to various statements, whether from Popes and even other

Roman Catholic ecumenical councils, um, such as Florence, which will very explicitly say that even talk about the, uh, the lack of efficacy for the sacraments, even baptism for, uh, those outside of the jurisdiction of the

Bishop of Rome. Um, and of course, again, more distinctions attempted to be made. Um, but if you, if you, if you put them side by side,

I forgot, um, exactly where in the council of Florence in it, but it does make a very explicit statement regarding the non -efficacy of a baptism for a non -Catholics.

Um, but then likewise, well, you have the letter by Pope Boniface the eighth, and I forgot what it's called.

It'll probably come back to me in a second, but basically where it says it condemns the Greeks, uh, the Greeks, so -called in other words, the

Eastern Orthodox, as those who are outside of the church, they are outside of the church period, and that it is absolutely necessary for salvation, uh, for anyone to be submitted to the

Bishop of Rome, to be subject to the Bishop of Rome. Sorry, is the idea that there's no salvation outside the

Catholic church? Has that been Rome's official position, but they've kind of watered that down a bit in our modern context.

My, my officially, yes, but in my opinion, it's functionally not their position anymore. Once was, but not anymore.

And that's it. Thank you, Sean. Yes. Unam sanctum, uh, sanctum, uh, that's the letter by Pope Boniface the eighth.

He says that it is absolutely necessary for salvation to be in subject, to be subject to the Roman pontiff. And back then, this doesn't just refer to his spiritual headship.

He was considered also a temporal leader as well. Um, and so subject to him almost quite literally as a King, as an earthly King as well.

Um, and by contrast, Rome today, um, functionally doesn't make that claim anymore. And you can, and again, you can read, uh, the letters like Lumen Gentium from the second

Vatican council to that effect. Um, but I think really the most important and, uh, key evidence on the weakness of the papacy for the

Bishop, uh, for, for Romanism is the fact of the utter scarcity and the virtual non -existence of good and early evidence for this office of the papacy.

Um, you can see their claims on what Matthew 16 says, and it doesn't say anything close to a Roman Catholic papacy.

It just says you are Peter and on this rock, I'll build my church and against the hell shall not prevail against it.

And I'll give to you the keys of the kingdom and so on and so forth. Okay, cool. What is that saying? It says Peter has certain

Peter himself. Peter has certain prerogatives. Cool. Anybody can accept that.

And everybody does accept that. It doesn't say anything about only him having those prerogatives.

In fact, it's very clear in Matthew 18 that the other apostles have those same prerogatives. It is literally said of them as well.

They can bind them loose. Um, and on that specific issue, many Roman apologists, like even ones

I respect, like I'm sorry, but the, the, the level of cope in dealing with Matthew 18 is staggering.

Absolutely staggering. Whether I'm sorry, you said the manner of what? Oh, the, the, the level of cope that they'll try to give, um, to explain away

Matthew 18, where they'll say, oh, but Peter got the keys in a special way and all the binding and loosing of the other apostles.

It's kind of, it's kind of sourced, uh, from Peter. And so he's still kind of supreme, uh, claims and nuances, which are absolutely nowhere in the ancient texts.

So it's just raw assertion, totally non -existent. Um, so there's that issue.

Um, and then the fact that nowhere else does Christ ever establish, he never explicitly establishes this office as,

Hey, there's going to be a perpetual office of supreme heads following Peter of the church in order to serve as a principle of unity.

And that's actually a very important thing. That's actually very key and important. It's not just a, oh, I'm assuming sola scriptura or, oh, well, so you believe everything has to be explicit.

Well, no. But actually, if you look at the precedent of salvation history, when God wants to establish an authority, he establishes an authority.

Yes. He doesn't give little crumbs and hints, whatever, which are later deduced to then, oh, look, here's some authority here.

He actually says, Hey, I'm going to establish the Kings of Israel Kings after David.

Hey, I'm going to establish you as a prophet. Hey, I'm going to establish you apostles.

Hey, you apostles as the apostles. Hey, we're going to establish bishops who govern the local churches.

It's clear and explicit when God wants to establish authority, he does that. Does he ever establish a perpetual papal office?

He never does everything he says about Peter. He says about Peter, simply, he never says anything about an abstract office that can be passed on from Peter to later successes.

Even if we grant that Peter was in some way supreme over the apostles, which I think it's very reasonable to hold that he had some sort of primacy of the other apostles.

But in terms of supremacy, analogous to how Rome considers the bishop of Rome supremo, the other bishops, no, no way.

Absolutely nothing close to that. Do you think this is related to kind of a power struggle of the three or the three major centers of Christianity during their earlier years between Rome, Antioch and Jerusalem, and that the power, the centralized power, religious power in Rome with an attempt to kind of get the upper hand in terms of who would be the most influential.

Do you think that's related to anything? In terms of why Rome claims supremacy or those earlier years?

Yeah, I haven't gone crazy in depth on that, so I can't really give anything definitive, but I think I can say that, yeah, power plays.

They were definitely a thing back then. You can see bishops of Rome, like clearly having some level of hubris and wanting to flex their supremacy to some degree.

Key example would be Pope Stephen against Cyprian on the rebaptism issue and Cyprian just being straight to his face like, no, you don't, you don't, you don't get, you don't get to say what

I have to do. I'm a bishop and every bishop we have our own rights in order to decide what we believe and what we're going to teach and what we're going to enforce in our own diocese.

We all have our own freedom in that respect. So, yeah, that issue, I think the lack of any explicit establishment of a paper office is itself a decisive silence.

And it's not just assuming sola scriptura. If someone hypothetically provided for me a reliable, let's say, first or early second century source, which says,

Hey, we know this account where, uh, from this, this apostle told us that Jesus at this time established a papal office for all of Peter's successes.

And if that, if that existed, that kind of a historical, uh, account or a document and it wasn't within scripture,

I'd accept it because that's historical data. That's the thing. I'm not framing this as, oh, it must be in scripture or else it doesn't matter.

Right. I'm framing it simply as, and any good Protestant apologists would frame it as give us good historical data. Sure. And there is absolutely nothing to that effect for centuries in the church that even comes close to claiming anything of the first Vatican council.

And when the claims do start to be made, uh, by bishops of Rome, like Stephen the first, for example, um, uh, or, or by the likes of was it

Leah? I don't think it was Leah or, or Pope Agatha, for example, in his letter, um, to him in his, in his letter to a council, uh, they don't provide any new historical data.

They make assertions and perhaps they'll appeal to something like Matthew 16 or whatever. But other than that, they never appeal to any good historical data, anything new, which says,

Hey, Christ actually himself, we have this account of Christ actually establishing this office other than passages like Matthew 16, which we can see for ourselves clearly do not teach that thing.

And so absent any of that evidence that, that, that itself is actually, I think the decisive defeater for the claims of the papacy, because the precedent of Christian history is that authority is very explicitly established and clearly evidenced.

And we have absolutely none of that for the papacy. We have nice comments about the church of Rome, and we see that church of Rome has a degree of great influence in the early periods, but that's not a necessary, that's not necessarily a, uh, a result of a papacy.

There's a billion different views out there of the role of the bishop of Rome in many times. And none of them, and the vast majority of them do not have to entail the first Vatican council.

Um, and so I think just as the papacy is the definitive, is the greatest strength of Rome. I think it's also their greatest weakness precisely because of how demonstrably novel it is.

So, so I have two things. So two, two more things on Roman Catholicism and we can move into a little bit of Eastern Orthodoxy and, uh, um, guys, if you're enjoying this conversation, uh, please show your support, uh, you know, click the thumbs up, share this, um, when we're done and share it with, with other people, uh, cover, uh,

Paul's covering a lot of information. So I hope you guys are catching up. And again, I want to encourage people to be up questions.

Um, please preface your question with a question. Of course, super chats. Um, I feel like I haven't had a, I haven't had a super chat in a long time.

If you have, if you feel inclined, if you feel inclined to send the super chat, it would be greatly appreciated.

Your question will be, uh, we'll get to your question quicker. Um, but anyway, even if you don't preface your question with your, with the, with the word question so that I can make the distinction between the questions and the comments.

Now I have two more questions with respect to Roman Catholicism. Then we could shift gears and talk briefly about Eastern Orthodoxy.

And then we could jump into some, uh, some of these questions. Um, and so someone has a comment here and I know this is a big deal, especially when dealing with, um,

Cameron Bertuzzi's conversion, um, and arguments that he saw as somewhat convincing.

Uh, so, uh, Vosk, Voska bra, I don't know if I'm saying that correctly.

It says the typological argument for the papacy is saying Peter is the new Eliakim and thus papacy.

Can you explain to us what this argument is and why it is not a good argument, nor should it be convincing to anyone looking into these issues?

Yep. Oh man, this one, this one bugs me a lot. And I mean, a lot.

I'm actually, um, cause, uh, Swan Sona, the main guy behind it, he's working on a final update for the argument.

Like he's, he's revised it multiple times over the, over time. But I think he's working on one final version to put out, um, with multiple other figures as well.

So he really wants this to be a big effort. And once that comes out, I'm hoping to kind of host a series of presentations, myself and a bunch of other good guys where we all present as like a decisive refutation of the argument.

Because it's just like, even in the form right now, in its advanced form right now, it's just, it's gotten to such an utterly ridiculous level, not just because it's a bad argument, um, but because of how influential it is, um, how sophisticated it is presented.

Um, and thus as a result of those two factors, how damaging it really is to the, to the intellectual growth of believers out there.

Like if someone's convinced of that argument, then they have accepted horrifically damaged hermeneutical principles.

If they have any at all, it is really, really, so it's not even remotely something that should even slightly convince someone looking at you.

Not at all. And all, and again, all respect to Swan. He's clearly very bright. He's clearly very well read, but he is forwarding extremely bad and damaging hermeneutical principles with a lot of special pleading to boot in order to kind of patch up the, the, the rough, the rough sections around it.

Um, and basically create a grand ad hoc case for the papacy, um, where if you just assume the papacy and if you kind of just shoehorn this a square peg into a round hole, then yeah, you're going to get the papacy.

Um, but I'm going to, I'm going to go into a little bit of detail on that. So first the argument itself, anyone who's not as familiar with it is simply that, um, between, uh, when

Christ gives Peter the keys of the kingdom, um, he says, okay, I'll give you the keys of the kingdom.

Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loose in heaven. Now there is a very similar sounding passage in Isaiah chapter 22, where God talks about, uh,

Eliakim that he's going to give him the key of the house of David and whatsoever he shall open, none shall shut and whatsoever he shall shut, none shall open.

And so on that, uh, on that basis, it is claimed that there is a type anti -type relationship between Eliakim and the, who was a prime minister of sorts of Israel below the king, uh, and also

Peter. And so type and anti -type being type, the kind of the model thing that comes before and the anti -type being its fulfillment.

So, uh, uh, Eliakim being a type of Peter and Peter being the anti -type of Eliakim.

Now that's a massive part of the debate itself, whether that actually is a type anti -type relationship.

And I think the, the massive lack of evidence on that is itself a fatal flaw in it, but we're just going to leave that for a second now.

Um, so with that type anti -type relationship established, they can discern that there was some clearly, there was some intended correlation between the office of Peter and Eliakim.

And so with that, um, to put it bluntly, Swan Sona just kind of takes that as a license to port over whatever features from Eliakim's office he wants over to Peter.

And that's me being totally respectable because I believe democratically that is exactly what's happening. It's very arbitrary. So he will say, for example,

Hey, look, Eliakim, he was the, he was the Supreme Prime Minister under the King of Israel.

Therefore, uh, Peter himself is the single head of the church under the King Christ. Um, and then we can go even further, uh,

Eliakim, uh, he had an office which had successes. Uh, therefore Peter's office is one which will have successes as well.

So on and so forth. He even tries to argue that, um, that Eliakim had infallibility in his office, which is like really very, very bizarre.

I don't know how he can do that. Um, but that's not even necessary in order to, that's not even necessary to argue that Peter also exercise infallibility.

So whatever, it's really weird. Um, in a nutshell though, he gleans from this single typology from this very, these two very small statements in scripture, which you can fit in a single postage note, and he tries to pull out of that the entire first Vatican council theory on the papacy.

And that's what you're saying before. That's a, that is a dangerous hermeneutical way of interpreting scripture.

Precisely. Yeah. And I'll go on, I'll basically explain it's fate, it's key and fatal flaw. Um, because again, what's one's trying to do good typology, what good real typology does is it first establishes and then assumes the reality, the concrete reality of the type and an anti -type.

So, uh, we can look at the first stage of this, assuming there's a type anti -type relationship with Peter and Eliakim, which that can be disputed.

And I may go on that soon. Assuming there is though, we can point to concrete realities. Um, Eliakim, it is said in the historical account of Isaiah, he will get the key of the house of David, whatever that means.

And that's kind of another problem. That's actually not very well defined. And Swan just kind of assumes it means something about the papacy, but whatever.

He has the key of the house of David. Whatsoever he shall open, none shall shut. Whatever he shall shut, none shall open. Um, and then likewise, we'll see with Peter in the historical account of Christ giving the keys to Peter, he's giving keys.

And he can bind on loose in heaven. And so based on those concrete, historically established realities and features, we can say there is a type anti -type relationship, and that's basically the end of that, um, typology is based on the already established reality of parallels between the type and the anti -type that's actually a key thing.

What's one tries to do, however, is rely on a certain set of assumed and established features, um, between Peter and Eliakim and then thus establish a typology between them.

Okay. In theory, that's, that's valid. But then he goes beyond that. He says, because there is a type anti -type relationship, therefore we can now infer further features from Eliakim that carry on to Peter, even without a direct textual warrant, which is deadly, absolutely deadly and destructive to the biblical and historical, sorry, you can do all sorts of things with this.

Yeah. At that point, it's utterly destructive. You can do anything with it. And my favorite example, um, which I still use this day, even though a lot of people try to respond to it and it's because of those responses that I think it actually works.

My favorite example is actually to say, Hey, look, um, there's a type anti -type relationship between the

Kings of Israel, especially David and Jesus. Cool. Awesome. Um, Hey, guess what?

The Kings of Israel had, um, they had harems of virgins and concubines. Oh, wow. Would you look at that?

Therefore, I guess Jesus himself perished. The thought has a harem of concubines and virgins up in heaven.

Now, of course, that's a, it's a very deliberate, uh, it's a very deliberate example of mine because of how blasphemous it is.

And so people will obviously try to say, well, of course not. Uh, this, this, this clearly can't be true because clearly in, in Holy scripture, um, monogamy is shown as supreme and, uh, virgins and concubines and harems and all that stuff.

That stuff's sinful. So Christ being totally perfect in God, he wouldn't have that at all and so on and so forth. Which I'd say, yeah,

I agree. And yet I can still reach that contradictory conclusion by the same method that the

Eliakim argument does. So you simply being able to say that, Oh no, but for other reasons, we can discount, um, that, that, uh, that typological, uh, argument, um, that doesn't actually destroy my point.

Cause I agree for those same reasons. It doesn't work, but what it does show is that the method used for the

Eliakim argument can produce consistently contradictory claims, right?

That's the problem. And if it is able to do that, then why can't it also, for example, produce claims, which while maybe they're not explicitly contradictory with all, with what, uh, with what

Holy scripture says, it may prove things which simply don't exist, period. So that's the problem with this method as an entirety.

You can use it to prove things which are otherwise, which we know from other evidences are simply unable to be true.

And yet according, apparently we're expected to take that method as something which proves a fundamental foundation of the

Christian faith. It's utterly ridiculous. Goes to show how far you have to go to establish those points.

Now we need, now we need, now we need to move on to my last Catholic question, um, only because, uh, we're already at the one hour and 10 minutes.

Um, I wanted you to talk briefly about, um, this whole thing that Cameron Bertucci was using in his kind of journey and exploration of Roman Catholicism, this issue of, uh,

Bayesian analysis. Um, what do you think of that? Do you think that's, that's an appropriate way to kind of address some of these issues when you're exploring the truth of a position, especially something is so important as Roman Catholicism, should we be engaging in study of the truth of Roman Catholicism based on kind of a

Bayesian analysis? What are your thoughts? Mm. Yep. Yep. I'm not a

Bayes expert by any means, although I did try to study myself up at least on the gist of what Bayes does.

Um, so there's that, but I can confidently say that I'm quite versed in historical method and doing issues of history and discerning answers to historical questions to which

I can, with that combined with at least knowing what Bayes does in a very basic sense, um,

I believe to use Bayes as Cam has is disastrous, utterly disastrous, um, because it gives a false sense of mathematical certainty to historical questions.

It gives you the false impression that, Hey, look, I'm a sign. I have numbers and probabilities on these different bits of data.

And so if I just plug them in together, it's going to give you a very, give me a very precise mathematical number, which is going to give me much more certainty on my question and on my answers to these historical issues.

The only problem is how do you actually get to those numbers? Um, and so with Bayesian analysis, to put it very, uh, briefly for people in what it tries to do is it looks mainly at, uh, to in a basic sense, it will look at two competing theories.

So P versus not pay. And then what it tries to do is it tries to kind of create a standard of a feedback loop, um, where you get some established data first and you try to ask, um, how likely is this data given pay and how likely is this data given not pay so on and so forth.

You put that together and it'll give you probabilities for pay and not pay, uh, primarily for pay. Uh, in this case, uh, that is the papacy.

Um, and then what you can do, it also allows you then to plug in new data, which once you plug it in, it'll then do a new calculation.

That's give you a new probability. So it gives you a mechanism. It's cool. Many in many different areas of life, it allows you to update your reasoning and probabilities on, on various other issues.

Now, the problem is how do you decide the numbers because with many good applications of Bayes, it's, it's used for very, um, stuff you don't really have to interpret in a qualitative manner.

It's just like, for example, you want to calculate the probability that this swimmer will win in this race, uh, versus this other swimmer.

You just need to look at the probabilities of, um, all the data you need to plug in is the, the, the wins and losses of, of both races and perhaps like the racing conditions as well, very easily quantifiable stuff.

Um, problem with this, when you're dealing with historical documents, you are not dealing with quantifiable stuff.

99 % of the time you are dealing with qualitative statements of literature. You are dealing with a statement that whatsoever

Peter shall bind in earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatsoever shall be loosened shall be loosed in heaven. Um, and likewise, you're also dealing with data like Irenaeus, who says that it's necessary for one, for one to, uh, obey the church at Rome, not the bishop specifically, but the church at Rome on account of its preeminent authority, that is its coherence with the universal

Christian tradition and its preservation of the tradition from Peter and Paul, how do you quantify that into a number, into a probability on how likely it is given the papacy?

Versus not the papacy. How do you quantify that at all? Do you quantify it as what? 90%, 70%, 40 % seems very subjective.

Even that assumes even that kind of answer would assume that it's more likely in one theory than another, but how are you going to get to that conclusion?

You're going to get to that conclusion. You're going to get to those numbers by qualitative historical reasoning.

And so ultimately Bayes becomes except at best at best as just a way to organize your thoughts beyond that it becomes utterly redundant because now it is garbage in garbage out, you are relying on qualitative historical reasoning in order to come up with your numbers, basically doing exactly what you would already be doing without Bayes, except without Bayes, you can at least be honest about the fact that this is qualitative data and it allows you to craft a historical narrative, not simply come out with a number at the end, like a percentage.

So that's the big problem I have with Cam's use of Cameron's discussion with James White. I think

Dr. White brought up a good point that it was very clear that in his discussion with Dr.

White, that there is a lot of important material that Cameron has just never read. And Dr.

White pointed to the fact that, well, how do you know there's not information in those unread documents, which he probably should have been familiar with that will actually throw off the entire probability scale.

It's like, I think that was an excellent, that was an excellent point. But yeah,

I genuinely, I genuinely worry how much important data Cam has left unread, let alone not properly reckoned with.

Right. Yep. Well, OK, so now we're going to shift gears for just a few more minutes and then we're going to jump into some questions.

My last, my last question for you is ortho bros.

What is an ortho bro and what, how can a

Protestant meaningfully interact with an ortho, an ortho bro? So define for us what an ortho bro is and how might

Protestants interact with some of the ways that they engage? Yeah. Yeah.

So to define an ortho bro, I think the best way to define an ortho bro is a, is a, uh, how would

I say it? How would I, how would I describe it? A thoroughly Westernized orthodoxy fan.

And by that, I mean, they are someone who has converted to Eastern orthodoxy, which historically has a very, uh, well, the

Eastern, uh, specifically Eastern Mediterranean way of thinking and way of thought. They go into it, but they're still

Western thinkers. They're still fundamentally Western in their thought. And so as a result, you get this kind of very aggressive

Jay Dyer type of thinker who's still, even if they claim to be going against it, still fundamentally rely on very

Western ways of thinking and reasoning. Um, but they're doing it in defense of a very

Eastern system. And even if they may recognize Eastern ways of thinking very often, they end up creating these very bizarre technical

Western style arguments, which don't actually make much sense in their

Eastern system and can actually rubbish their own system. And so the perfect example of that is the one that we brought up earlier with the

Canon, where even an orthodox may try to argue, Oh, you, you, you Protestants, you, you guys have a, you, you, you only have the fallible knowledge of infallible

Canon that's absolutely absurd. You need, you need an infallible, infallible source and infallible thing for your

Canon orthodox apologetics channel is saying, name his leader. Jay Dyer. He's, he's the, he's the prototype.

He's the archetype of the author, bro. Um, as much as I respect in other areas, but anyway, they'll argue that, but then they won't realize that according to Eastern orthodoxy itself, they do not have any established

Canon period. They don't actually have one. And Craig Trulia was here in the channel before in the chat before orthodox

Christian theology, he has an excellent video that's actually titled epistemic certainty, where he basically tries to combat that very argument from author bros, where he will say, guys, we don't even have a singular

Canon. We all rely on quote unquote, fallible articulations of the Canon.

There's multiple different cannons accepted by various councils and saints throughout the East. So this is still an open question for us.

So don't go at the West. Don't go with the Protestants trying to argue. This is a fatal destruct destruction of their position, because if it is for them, it is for us as well.

And that's a fundamental, really perfect example of how Western thinking author bros do not really understand the

Eastern way of thinking. At least many of them, though, those who make that argument. So, so, so an ortho bro is a

Westernized orthodoxy fan. They've converted to orthodoxy, but in aggressive, specifically aggressive, because there's, there's ones who may be

Western thinkers, but they're like, they're good. They're good people. But the ortho bro pejorative, which is a totally fan pejorative,

I'll say, is specifically at those who are like that. They're Westernized thinkers and they're super polemical. So that's, that's how

I define it. So would you, would you equate an ortho bro with kind of a cage stage,

Eastern orthodox convert? That's exactly what it is to a T. That is exactly what it is.

Alrighty. Okay. So my, my last question for you, I lied. I said, that was my last question.

My last question for you, before we jump into this redonkulous list of questions that I, I mean,

I would imagine we can't get through all of them. It's late over here. So we'll try to get through a lot of them, but I won't be able to get through all of them.

So I apologize folks, but how would you direct a person who wants to get into this, this topic and study what are some good resources and how should one engage the resources?

I mean, you showed, you showed a couple of books there. Do you read those books from beginning to end? You know, how do you mark up your books?

How do you take notes? How do you navigate such a vast topic that deals with history and all sorts of theological issues and concepts?

Yeah. Yeah. So as for my personal canons of how I treat my books, I do not put a drop of ink in them.

I hate the sight of people writing in their books, underlining them, circling things, even highlighting stuff.

When I see that in a second hand books that I get and I see it inside, I'm just like,

I shake up and it really churns my stomach. When I see ink, when

I see foreign ink on the page of a book, I despise that. Absolutely hate it. The most I would do would probably be what

Jay Dyer does and fill like sticky notes on books for certain parts, which is fair enough. I might end up doing that sometime. I don't right now though.

I typically just like write down or type. Yeah, there you go. And that's acceptable. The most you have to be careful of is like having excess adhesive on the page.

But I have, I have, I can't really see it, but I have these sticky pads and then

I have like little subheadings of what's covered in each of the things.

I mean, I'm pretty sure there's a more, a better way to do it, but there you go. I probably, honestly,

I probably will start doing the sticky note thing sometime because it is genuinely very useful. Normally what I'll do is just write down the reference somewhere.

But then I won't really, cause I don't really have a central place for it yet, even though I do want to get one. Otherwise I'll just,

I'll just lose it. But very often, thank God for my memory. I very often remember where my, where key sections of books.

So you don't take a lot of notes. I, I, I don't really take a ton of notes. That's the, that's the interesting thing. I tend to remember a lot.

So, so you are reading, so you say, okay, so I have a book, you sit there and you read it and then it just kind of sticks with, you're not writing something down or making, not, not every word or something like that, but I'll very often remember substantially what's in there.

So I can look at, let's say, let's say for example, so let's say volume two here.

Well, I haven't read this in a, in a, in a decent amount of time, but I can remember that here in volume two of the

David King and William Webster set, this second volume here deals with the historical data of, of the principles behind sola scriptura and historical evidences for it.

And it gives treatments on the, on the beliefs regarding the nature of scripture and tradition from various early church fathers.

And something very notable is how in this volume, it'll point to fathers, like for example, Tertullian, as well as Basil, Caesarea and others.

And it notes how the earliest articulations of extra biblical tradition, which the church accepts are almost entirely, if not entirely on matters of practice and not of doctrine, which is actually a very, very key observation, not totally sure if that's exclusively the case.

And when abouts the first appeal to tradition as a distinct or as a distinctive doctrinal source, apart from scripture comes, but nonetheless, that's a very key observation.

I remember in this book and specific sections on Tertullian, Chrysostom and others who talk about this.

So that's, that's something I can remember, but otherwise I might get into the sticky note thing and just getting into recommended books and all that stuff.

There's a whole process that needs to go about before you even, honestly, before a Protestant even considers going into the apologetics with Rome in the

East, especially with the potential of being suckered in by them. First, learn your own tradition, what tradition are you in?

And if you're not, if you don't think it's a good tradition and you think there's a better tradition out there, go there, learn that.

I'll highly recommend the Anglican communion, for example, specifically the Anglican tradition. Even if you're in one of the other necessary breakaway communions for Anglicanism, learn your tradition, learn it back to front first, because that is how, in my experience, countless converts go from East, go from a

Prot tradition to the East or to Rome because they barely know their own tradition. And it frankly allows the apologists to define their own tradition for them.

Oh, you just believe it's only your Bible and nothing else matters. And then the Prot's like, huh, that does sound absurd.

And then the Romanist or the Eastern is like, we got more church, we got my body of Christ. And then the

Protestant will be like, huh, I should probably go join that. I'm totally ignorant, especially if they're like an Anglican, for example, but there's an entire flipping tradition of the body of Christ, what tradition is and other questions like that.

So many Prot converts, they're made by being ignorant of their own tradition. So first learn your tradition and find if it's solid.

And if you don't think it's good and solid, find another solid Prot tradition. Then once you're really good and confident with that, then

I highly recommend you study the early church historical sources. Don't even go straight into the

Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox apologetics yet. Get yourself a good, positive articulation of church history on whatever topics you feel like.

Like what do you suggest? Oh, mate, it depends what you're interested in, it really does.

I guess if you're interested in issues of authority and church authority and such, especially with Rome in the

East, then I guess find church sources, early church sources that discuss like ecclesiology.

What's the nature of bishops? What's the nature of tradition? What's the status of the Bishop of Rome even?

How were councils received, so on and so forth. There's many sources on that, so I can't really recommend one. But just diligently search for the primary sources yourself and read the primary sources.

Don't exclusively stay with a secondary source, even if it's a good and academic one, because they are fundamentally filtering things for you and they're not infallible.

So the best thing, the absolute necessary thing you can do when studying a topic of history is look at secondary scholarship.

When you're going to have to, to a certain extent, they're going to give you some necessary tools when going into this. But go into the primary sources, make sure that is a primary means of your reading, the primary content of your reading so you can actually get an authentic knowledge of these things.

Because when you have that, you're going to be able to know what you're talking about, like in a very literal sense. It's not just mediated to you by a scholar.

And thus, as a result, when a lay Romanist or Easterner tries to throw out assertions at you on a certain topic, you'll just instinctively be able to say, oh, that's not true, actually.

And here's why. And just open up a book and show them. So, yes. So learn your own tradition, go into the primary sources on first on whatever issue you want to look at.

And then with that, what I also said earlier, don't grant Romanist or Eastern apologists.

Don't allow them to define the terms of the debate. Don't let them do that, because that's how they often try to win is they'll establish the standards of what is acceptable and what's not.

In many cases, try to give you the exclusive burden of proof and just try to enforce in the debate that their position is the assumed default, which is bull.

You don't have to do that at all. You can likewise and absolutely should press them because if anything, they have they have somewhat of a greater burden.

Technically, everybody has a burden of proof, whether us Protestants who claim that there is no infallible council or Pope or whatever.

That's we actually have a burden for that. I don't grant the idea that people with a negative claim don't have a burden of proof. I think it's hogwash.

But likewise, so do they. And if anything, one can argue that practically the Easterner and the Romanists have a greater burden because they're the ones doing the first serve, so to speak, in the tennis match.

They're the ones coming to you and claiming that you must submit to their authority, not just what you already accept in the

Bible and that, but you must submit to their additional authority, in which case, if they're coming to you first, which is really 99 % of encounters, in my opinion, you have every right to demand them to prove it and then grill them on that because a lot of the evidence you're going to be shown is stuff which, if you are well versed in the primary sources, can be very easily dispatched on, in my humble opinion.

Maybe they'll disagree, but I can even say that there are sophisticated responses to our responses, so on and so forth, and that allows the discussion to become more level -headed and more respectful and less of a gotcha by either side.

And so it kind of stabilizes things. But yeah, either way, that's what you need to do. Get an authentic scholarly knowledge of these issues.

Do not allow them to control the discussion and you'll be G. All right. That's awesome.

Very helpful. Once again, I am speaking with the other Paul. If you have not yet subscribed to his

YouTube channel, I highly recommend, you know, do him a favor, subscribe and you'll be doing yourself a favor.

There's a lot of useful and really just really good videos that are helpful in this specific area.

And as you have gathered from our discussion here, he's very enthusiastic and animated and fun, so he's not boring to listen to.

So I tip my hat, you entertain me as well as educate me when I'm listening, so I appreciate it.

Thank you, man. Thank you. All right. Well, let's move to the questions now. Paul, this is how we're going to do this to get the most out of this.

Your answers need to be shotgun. Now, I know that some questions require providing context and things like this, but let's assume for the most part that people asking the question already have somewhat of a background so that we can kind of just shoot through as many as possible.

OK. And if a question does, because my thing is I'm pretty uncompromising.

Like, look, if I think there's some necessary nuance on a question that needs to be said, I'm not going to leave it out. And so if I do encounter a question which requires a lot of necessary nuance,

I might hopefully, if I know of something, point them to some content I or someone else has done on the issue.

So if it comes to that. OK, so I got to search through. I'm looking for the word question.

OK, if you didn't put question in front of your question, then I don't I'm going to skip it over.

So let's see here. Did it to do question above.

OK, someone said question above. I don't see your question from above. Oh, this might be awkward.

Let's see. OK, here we go.

So Orthodox Christian theology. If not, if you're not Orthodox, how do you have a biblical canon, bruh?

Oh, destroyed. Pack it up, guys. Craig, you wouldn't happen to know the nearest, what is it, catechumenate or whatever?

It's the nearest catechism class, whatever, here in Sydney. Oh, my worldview's been destroyed, man.

Unbelievable. That's my man, Craig. He's the one where we actually did the collab. He's the one I mentioned before. We did that collab, basically rubbishing that that argument.

OK, it's a common question. So so how would you give us a short, succinct answer to this? I mean, basically the answer

I gave already because we so just wind back the stream a bit. Whoever's watching, if you genuinely want an answer to that, wind back the stream and watch what

I said there. OK, watch my collab with Craig on that issue. All right. Logan says, what would be your response to the claim of Catholics and Orthodox that justification is infused or ontological?

What is the best way to reply to this scripturally and historically with the fathers? Yeah, yeah, well, with the fathers,

I can't give too much of an answer because, again, I have to be honest when I say that that's not an issue that I've done super mad in -depth research with, except for a couple of examples, mainly

Clement of Rome, who I do believe affirms a Protestant understanding of justification.

But otherwise, to keep it brief, I just say look at the logic of what Paul is saying, particularly in Romans with respect to what it means to be justified.

It is totally apart from any works, period, not simply ceremonial works, but good works, period, and that this justice that we receive from God, our good sight before God's eyes is entirely by the righteousness of Christ that he achieved, excuse me, that he achieved in his life at the cross and so on.

And so that's what I'd simply say. Read through, do a careful read through and study of Romans.

Don't don't assume any prior categories in it. Read through Romans, for example, do good exegetical method with it, extract the truth from it.

And yeah, and then I believe from that, you'll find out their systems don't really work. All right, thank you for that.

John Kolaroffi says, Paul, do you agree that the true church must have the hierarchy of bishops, presbyters, and deacons as described in the letters of St.

Ignatius of Antioch? Excellent question. Thanks for coming on, John Kolaroffi. He's a really cool guy.

Big, very scholarly dude. And I'd say, I'd say no, not in essence. No, it doesn't.

Especially chiefly in those specific ideas of those offices. Because especially when you look at Irenaeus, when he says that,

I know what he's talking about in Irenaeus letters, when he will say, for example, in his letter to the Trillions, he will say that you must submit to the bishop, to the presbyters and to the deacons and he likens them to Christ and the apostles and that.

And then he says, apart from these, a church is not called, it is not called a church literally from the

Greek. The issue is though, I don't think that's actually related to this kind of question we have where there's this question of like, what kind of hierarchy must the church have?

And people will raise Ignatius to say, oh, look, you must have a three -tier hierarchy in order to be a true church.

And so they're assuming that the dialectic is between a three -tier hierarchy versus a non -three -tier hierarchy or so forth.

But actually, I don't think that's what Irenaeus is saying at all. I think he's juxtaposing hierarchy period versus the chaos of going off with heretics and doing their own thing.

So I've brought this up in past streams, mainly in a response to a collab with Joe Heschmeyer and Trent Horne, I think.

And they raised the same passage and I basically went through it and said, Irenaeus, his question is between hierarchy and chaos, not one hierarchy versus another one.

And so Ignatius isn't arguing for specifically the three -tier hierarchy, but he's assuming a three -tier hierarchy is the normal and then juxtaposing that to non -hierarchical chaos.

And so he's not actually giving an answer on what hierarchy you must have. He may theoretically be totally okay with a two -tier hierarchy as long as it is a good hierarchy that's teaching the truth.

So that's what I'd say on that issue. I'd say otherwise with the biblical evidence, no, it's not. That specific hierarchical arrangement is not essential to the church.

Okay. The Orthodox Apologetics Channel says, In reference to the fact that heretics ruled various seas through long periods of history, can you show

Orthodox saints and fathers blessing their recognition? No, that's something I haven't studied.

I'm not sure the significance of that though. I'm not sure why. I think the mere fact that heretics were ruling many seas for a long time is significant on its own.

Okay. Let's see here. I'm going quickly. I am skipping some stuff that don't have question in front of the question.

If you end up getting to certain comments, because there was a small string of comments which tried to dispute my analogy for the typology argument and the whole virgins and harem thing.

If you get, if you end up getting to those comments, could you highlight some of them? Because I think there's some important stuff to respond to that. All right,

I'll try to, as I'm going, scrolling through. Logan says, Thoughts on justification under the

Catholic and Orthodox view in the early church and scripture. Is it at, is it as historically clear as claimed by someone like Michael Lofton or Catholic answers?

Thanks. Yeah. I'd say that from, from a minimal, I do know of the church historical data on the issue.

I'd say no. And given my other interactions with Catholic answers and Michael Lofton in their claims on, in their historical claims on multiple other topics where I believe it can be shown they're demonstrably wrong.

I would not trust them when they make an assertion that the early church was so clearly for the Catholic or Orthodox view.

Again, I've simply cite the one example I do know very well. First Clement, I believe does thoroughly go against an

Orthodox or Roman Catholic view of justification. And they don't take that lying down. They have responses to that. So it's a worthy debate.

But that's just my initial take. But otherwise, and another important principle with that, even if you don't know well on a topic and thus you, if you don't know well a topic very much and they try to make assertions from that, don't just make that, let them use that occasion to just get away with their assertion.

You should thus still force them to actually demonstrate their claim because they'll very often make these claims.

I'm like, Oh, all the church fathers said this or all the church fathers said that. And even if you don't know the answer to that question yourself, even if you haven't studied it, you can still demand them to show receipts.

Most of the time they'll end up just showing like two or three quotes or whatever from church fathers, which

I don't think I need to say it, but that doesn't prove a consensus. So yeah. All right. Excellent.

This is not a question. It's more of a comment. Sola Scriptura doesn't make sense to me. Can you help Eric make sense out of Sola Scriptura by briefly explaining what it is and why it's not a problem?

I mean, even honestly, even a brief explanation would go on for such a long time. So I guess I just asked Eric, what doesn't make sense to you about it?

I can answer that. Okay. All right. That's fair. So even when you're not answering the question in its entirety,

I think the way you just like answered is helpful in teaching people how to not answer a question that's not, it doesn't, there's no context.

I'm glad you noticed that. I do try to make clear, I do try to help people out, not just in the content of my answer, but in the mode of my answering and in the standards

I employ. So I'm really glad you noticed that. That's very important. Truth Defender says, can your guest explain divine energies?

I suppose from kind of like an Eastern Orthodox perspective. Eh, not, not really, not really beyond like a very, very basic parsing,

I guess. Cause it's not something I've studied mad deeply other than just the fact that it's a distinction between the very essence and being of God versus his energies, so to speak, or activities.

He is from the Greek Energia. And I know they like to say Energia, but no, if we're looking at the

Greek pronunciation, it's Energia. That's how it's said. Sorry guys. I study this stuff. But yeah, basically a distinction between the acts, the very being of God versus the, the, uh, the activities of God.

And this can, um, and they are particularly like to reference the uncreated energies of God, which they believe is a very key and necessary component to their idea of theosis where we're not merely, um, taking place with the created temporal activities of God, but in his eternal activity.

Um, so that's, that's my brief knowledge of it. Okay. Uh, Matt Schneider asks, how damaging is

Gregory Palamas reception as a saint by Byzantine Catholics to Rome for centuries, he was seen as a heretic.

What is his status these days, if you're familiar? Yeah, again, limited knowledge in this, but I have looked a little bit of it.

And just from the little bit I have seen that he, that would be very seriously damaging, at least for, I don't know the level of official tolerance for his veneration, other than that, this is something that's quite common, um, with Eastern Catholic circles, which

I think is a very big problem for them. Um, and there are Roman Catholic apologists who are trying to say like, oh,

Palamas, he was actually look, there's a distinction between the body of the church and the soul of the church. So, um, even though he was outside of the canonical bands of the church, he may have just been invincibly ignorant and what he said.

And so, um, that, that, that maybe, maybe like some limited appreciation for him could be tolerated, blah, blah, blah.

Um, but then at least I haven't read further into it, but at least from what I've heard, there was very recently released a work called the, uh,

Apodictic Treatises of the Palamite councils or something like that.

Uh, it's from Uncut Mountain Press. I believe it's an Orthodox press. It's just been released. And it's basically a fresh first time translation,

I believe of the, what was called the Palamite councils. Um, and from what I've, from what

I've heard from those who've read it, um, it definitively shows that no, the Palamite councils, they knew what the

West was teaching on the Filioque. Um, they weren't invincibly ignorant. Palamas wasn't invincibly ignorant and they directly opposed what

Rome taught. Um, and so if that flies and that would make a very big problem for Rome's apparent toleration of veneration of Palamas.

Okay. Excellent. Uh, John Kolorafi says, uh, Arrhenius wrote that Peter and Paul handed the epistle to Linus.

What's your expiration date for this apostolic succession? I genuinely don't get what, what that's trying to say,

I guess to be, to try and, to try and take in the context of the discussion of the discussion,

I guess, uh, Kolorafi is trying to say, um,

I'm trying really hard. The only way I can really see this making sense is

I guess to ask when does appealing to this succession from Roman bishops stop being, um, significant as a witness or something, but even it doesn't really sound like that.

Um, I don't know. I genuinely don't understand what Kolorafi is really, really saying here. Okay. You guys got to make your questions clear.

That's, that's, that's, that sometimes it can be difficult, uh, to engage. Now I can't find the, the particular comments that you were looking for.

Do you remember what they were related to? And then we can kind of, yes, it was on the, um, it was when I gave my analogy of how

Swan does the, uh, like him argument and then the analogy for the harems in that, um, there was comments by enslaved by truth and, uh,

Fosca bra and Jonathan talks. Um, so those are the main comments. I think, um,

I think the main one we want to highlight is Jonathan talks that he's, he's, he's the main one that really gives it. I don't see his comments here.

It's how far up? It's not too far up from the present. From the, from the most recent?

Yep. From the most recent. It's not too far up. All right. So John, what's his name? Jonathan. Jonathan talks and Jonathan with a

Y not a, yeah, not an I. Okay. I don't see it.

Huh? Do you, do you see it on your end? I have, I have it with me. Um, why don't you, okay.

So I'm going to look for it and I'll try to put it. Why don't you read it? So, uh,

I love substantive engagement. So Jonathan talks says this parody, that is how I parodied Swann's argument.

There it is. Yep. I parodied Swann's argument with claiming that because Christ is the antitype of the Kings of Israel, therefore

Christ is a harem of virgin concubines. Uh, Jonathan responds and thank you for this substantial engagement. He, um, he says this parody doesn't work because the fulfillment is also spiritually greater and more perfect than that, which would it, that which it fulfills precisely in the areas where the thing fulfilled fail and are imperfect.

To which I'd say two things. One, one could simply say that that begs the question on what is and is not, um, perfect because as Swann is trying to use the

Eliakim typology to give new positive data and arguments, um, which can then itself be used to establish truths.

Likewise, I could simply say that the fact that we can draw, uh, the, the, the use of harems and that from, uh, from the

Kings of Israel over to Christ, that I could say that on that basis, it proves that harems are fine. And therefore there is a spiritually perfect fulfillment because for the

Kings of Israel, these harems are with imperfect women, uh, down on the earth. Whereas with Christ, the harems are up in heaven with very perfect women.

I could just say that. Um, so it becomes a very big problem of slippery, of very, very slippery standards.

Um, to which one person may say, but then that's going to contradict other scriptural witness on, uh, on, on sexual ethics to which

I say, okay, then it does. And that's the problem. And that's, that's the ultimate problem with this.

Cause I, I actually agree with this. I actually agree with this comment against the analogy. I'm, I actually accept the criticisms that people have given of the analogy itself.

And I, and I've mentioned before, multiple people have given those kinds of responses to say why the analogy doesn't work.

Um, why the parody, uh, the parody argument doesn't work in itself. And I say that I agree, but that's not the problem.

The problem is not that I'm positing that this really is a true thing. I agree with most of the criticisms against it.

The problem is that I, I arrived at this with the exact same method as Swan did for establishing, uh, certain qualities from Peter to Eliakim, such as for example, the fact that Eliakim's office has succession.

Therefore Peter's office has succession. Um, he can do whatever other, he can appeal to whatever other very circumstantial data he wants around that, but it's irrelevant because of the very basic demonstrable fact that there is no direct data in scripture anywhere, period, that Peter's alleged supreme office will pass on to anybody.

All the statements given to Peter on his power are given to Peter, the person, not to an abstract office.

That doesn't mean it's impossible, but it does preclude that from being something that's enforced and demonstrable because it's just not there.

And so if Swan is able to pull qualities, qualities from type to anti -type wholesale without any textual warrant,

I am thus also permitted to draw qualities from the type of the Kings of Israel to Jesus, which prove utterly faithful, uh, fatal to the faith.

And the fact that they are contradictory to other established elements of the faith actually doesn't just doesn't refute the parody and the use of the parody, but it refutes the method by which it arrived, by which

I derived that parody and thus what Swan did. That's the problem. That's why

I raised the parody. Excellent. I'm talking with the other Paul again.

I want to encourage you guys, if you have not already, please go over to his YouTube channel and subscribe, uh, like this video, watch his videos, like those videos as well.

And, um, and show him, um, some support there. Uh, Paul, this has been excellent.

There's a lot of information I could, I mean, we could basically go all day, uh, if we could, um, well, you could, you're, you're the one doing all the talking.

So I'm just asking the questions, but I thought you did an excellent job. And, uh, I'll ask you while we're live, uh, would you be interested in coming back on and covering something else?

I am 100, 100 % down, whether it's another topic or even one specific subtopic on this issue, uh, whatever, whatever you'd like me to do and which

I think I can give something good on a hundred percent down to come back on. Well, I very much appreciate that. Well, we're going to close things up here.

We're at the one hour and 46 minute mark. Uh, sometimes we go to two hours, but I, I'm a teacher, so I have to wake up super early and get to work.

So, uh, but I hope that, uh, everyone found this discussion, um, useful and informative.

Um, and I'm definitely going to go back and listen to it again and take notes. I do take notes. I have to take notes, but I get,

I I'm jiving with you, man. I, I love to see a nice crisp book with no markings on it is a beautiful thing.

So at any rate, well, um, is there anything that you'd like to say before we go?

Maybe, uh, any other resources or places where people can find what you're doing? Yeah.

So I actually also have a main website, uh, theotherpaul64 .com. So you can find me there.

I, uh, I blog there, I make articles and I'm wanting to try and get into the routine of like at least one big essay on a topic per month.

Um, if not every two months, if it becomes too demanding, um, I'm generally trying for that, but, uh, you know,

ADHD is a hell of an impediment, so, you know, still working on that. Um, but, uh, so there's that I'm on various platforms,

Facebook, Twitter, um, Gab and you've done some debates as well.

I have. Yes, yes, yes. I've done a, I've done a couple. I did the big one with Jimmy Akin. Um, I did, uh,

I've actually done two with Craig Trulia as well. Um, which those are, those are very good, but those ones are genuinely good.

Uh, I think, I think the one with Akin was just like, look, no one came out of that one smarter. Um, it was very frustrating, but either way, either way.

Um, so there was those, there was one I did a while ago on like a Facebook, a Facebook group, which was recording.

I put up on my channel. Um, yeah, so there's, there's those and those are really my main plugs.

And I also have a subscribe star, which is like a patron equivalent. Um, if anyone wants to financially support me. So yeah.

Sure. Awesome. Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Paul, for coming on. I'm looking forward to having you on again in the future and, um, everyone who has been so nice and respectful in the comments.

Thank you so much. This has been, this is definitely a controversial topic and, um, obviously we're coming at it from a perspective that, uh,

Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy is problematic. And so I am, I am actually surprised that the comments were so respectful.

I think it's probably because I have a genuine attitude. Okay. So let's, let's just get this real.

I'm half Australian and I'm half Lebanese. And so if people disrespect me, I don't let them get away with that.

So if, if someone wants to have like good debate and all that, I'm cool with that and I can keep it nice and calm and respectful.

But if someone decides to throw some disrespect my way, uh, then they're going to wish they didn't do that.

I'll just say that. So that's probably, that's probably a large reason why. And maybe they're just genuinely good people here as well. Yes, I'm, I'm very happy.

I like, I like when people who disagree can interact nicely in the, in the comments there. Um, well just, uh, one more shout out to our upcoming, uh,

Epic Online Calvinism Conference. Again, we're having Dr. James White, myself, Dr. Dion Bignon, Scott Christensen, and Saiten Bruggencake all covering different aspects of Calvinism.

So if that's something that is interesting to you, um, you can, uh, definitely show support for Revealed Apologetics by signing up for that.

You can go to revealedapologetics .com. Click on the dropdown menu entitled Precept You, and you could

RSVP your spot. That is January 21st. It's going to be, um, all day long from I think 10 or 1030 in the morning, all the way to 430 in the, um, afternoon.

So it's going to be a nice, long, uh, fun, uh, and exciting time. So just wanted to throw that out there.

Well, that's it for this episode, guys. Thanks again, Paul. And thank you so much everyone else for giving me your time.